The California Air Resources Board backed away last Friday from
strict new regulations that would have put a Berkeley startup company
out of business and dealt a severe blow to the nascent plug-in hybrid
industry. The board’s staff had proposed the new rules on the theory
that transforming a hybrid car, such as a Toyota Prius, into a mostly
electric vehicle would increase smog, even while acknowledging that
such conversions slash greenhouse gas emissions. But the board
overruled its own staff and unanimously ordered the agency to work out
a compromise with plug-in hybrid companies, such as 3 Prong Power of
Berkeley.
“We had a major victory,” said Daniel Sherwood, president of 3 Prong
Power, which opened last year inside Green Motors on San Pablo Avenue.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.” Sherwood credited a
story in the East Bay Express, published a little more than a
week before the air resources board meeting, with helping save the
plug-in hybrid industry, which has grown rapidly in the past year.
After the story came out (see cover story “Who’s Killing the Plug-In
Hybrid,” January 14), the Sacramento-based air resources board received
more than 130 comments on the proposed strict new rules, the vast
majority of which were opposed to them.
The board, led by its president, Mary D. Nichols, ordered the air
resources agency staff to devise new regulations ensuring that small
startups, like 3 Prong Power, can stay in business. 3 Prong Power and
its competitors convert used Priuses into mostly electric vehicles that
get up to 150 miles per gallon by putting a large battery in the car’s
trunk that can be plugged into any wall socket and recharged in four
hours. The proposed rules that the board voted against would have
required the small companies to undergo extensive emissions testing
that would have cost up to $125,000 and provide customers with ten-year
warranties on batteries that only last two to three years. Sherwood and
his business partner Paul Guzyk said the rules would have bankrupted
them.
While the board refused to adopt the new regulations on
after-market-parts companies like 3 Prong Power, it did approve similar
rules on new car manufacturers that plan to begin selling plug-in
hybrids in the next year or two. General Motors plans to unveil the
Chevy Volt in 2010 and Toyota may begin selling a plug-in Prius in late
2010 or early 2011. Both companies can easily afford the emissions
testing and warranty requirements, and neither opposed the new rules.
The board’s staff had argued that plug-in conversions could add to
California’s smog problems because of how the electric battery
interacts with the car’s gasoline-powered engine.
